Clinton and McCain to Appear Side by Side on MLK PanelThis will be a much-needed photo op for Clinton, who wants to frame the race as being between her and McCain, as the two most distinguished and serious candidates.
McCain Says He Used to Be Way More of a Jerk Than He Is NowJohn McCain is scheduled to give a speech at his alma mater, Episcopal High School, in Alexandria, Virginia, today. According to Reuters, the speech will address what led the Arizona senator to become the temperamental, F-bomb-dropping hothead that we know and, well … know.
And Now It’s Time for John McCain’s Timothy Ziemer’s Plagiarism ScandalIf you thought it was bad when Barack Obama plagiarized Massachuetts Deval Patrick, or when Hillary Clinton started running around going all, “Change! Change!” in a deep baritone, then the latest plagiarism scandal of the Endless Campaign of 2008 will get your knickers in a knot.
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Weary Electorate Warming to John McCainMcCain’s crossover appeal and “maverick” image are likely the perfect antidote to the star power of the Democratic candidates.
company town
Rick Astley Is Somehow Relevant AgainThe Times gets “rickrolled,” the NYPD searches cavities, and John McCain creakingly weighs in on the actions the Federal Reserve Bank took on behalf of Bear Stearns in our daily roundup of Media, Law and Finance news.
The McCain Girls Have Arrived, and They Have UmbrellasFrom the first vigorous chorus to the epic conclusion, in which small John McCains fall diagonally from the sky like suited sleet, you can only wonder: What the hell is going on here?
gossipmonger
Ashley Alexandra Dupré Continues to Haunt New YorkReal celebrities are riled by sightings of Eliot’s lady friend; Simon Doonan gets his own TV show and pretty people buy expensive homes in our daily roundup of the news from New York’s best gossip columns.
Huckabee Joins McCain in Supporting Obama’s Wright DefenseYesterday and today, Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee both stood up for Barack Obama concerning his relationship with controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright. On Morning Joe today, Huckabee candidly said, “Obama handled this about as well as anybody could.” He laid out his argument pretty simply:
“You can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do,” Huckabee says. “It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what … Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say ‘Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.’”
Whoa, that sounds like a pretty firm defense.
gossipmonger
Crikey! Are We Getting Madonna Back?
Madonna and Guy Richie may or may not be breaking up because Madonna “lost respect” for Richie when she found out he embellished his working-class roots. The upside: She may be moving to NYC! Matt Lauer has foolishly agreed to be roasted by the Friar’s Club. Donatella Versace is appearing at Barneys today to tout her menswear line. Foxy Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Representative Anthony Weiner totally acted like a couple during David Paterson’s swearing-in ceremony in Albany yesterday. Mary-Louise Parker is bad at giving directions to people in the West Village, even though she lives there. Cindy Adams thinks both Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg will make runs for governor.
in other news
Sirius Creates Media Circus in Microcosm With Client 9 RadioCan you not get enough of the Spitzer sex scandal? Is the minutiae of the governor’s trysts with hookers that has subsumed pretty much every media outlet for the entire week still somehow not enough? Do you feel that there are some important people, such as deposed publisher Judith Reagan, Wikepedia dumpee Rachel Marsden, and Dennis Hof, owner of Nevada’s Moonlight Bunny Ranch, whose full opinions have not been given their due? Then, friends, we hope you subscribe to Sirius Satellite Radio, which has just announced the creation of Client 9 Radio, a station fully devoted to news and opinion about Eliot Spitzer sex scandal. In addition to the aforementioned pundits, Client 9, which will air tonight and be hosted by Court TV’s Vinnie Politan, will also air the opinions of esteemed figures like John McCain, Alan Dershowitz, and “private eye Vito Colucci.” But most important, they will provide a forum for you, the listener, to join “this national conversation.” So go forth, citizen gossips! Let no crevice go unexplored.
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Who Will Be Able to Win the Electability Argument?
Last week a national Electoral College poll pitted Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama separately against John McCain in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. The numbers will obviously change between now and the general election, but the poll shows both Clinton and Obama defeating McCain with combinations of states that shake up the familiar red-blue divide of the past two presidential elections. And though they win with different states, the fact that the poll gives both Obama and Clinton an advantage fails to help resolve a main point of contention in the Democratic primary: Who is more electable? And so, as always, we turn to the pundits.
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John McCain Brings All the Billionaires to the YardJohn McCain is coming to New York next Tuesday for a giant fund-raiser to power his national campaign, reports Elizabeth Benjamin at the Daily News. It sounds like it’s going to be a doozy — the host committee includes Henry Kissinger, Alfonse D’Amato, Woody Johnson, Georgette Mosbacher, and Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain. Tickets are either $1,000 or $2,300 per person (get it? The most you can donate to one candidate?), and it will take place at the Plaza. So glamorous. But let’s get down to business (literally). How many billionaires will be in attendance? And how many billions do they represent? From Forbes.com’s most recent list, we count five: Henry Kravis (the world’s 178th-richest man, worth $5.5 billion), Ray Dalio (worth $4 billion), Louis Bacon (worth $1.7 billion), Marc Rowan (worth $1.5 billion), and Robert Fisher ($1.4 billion). That’s a total of over $14 billion in the room with the Republican presidential nominee. There are several dozen other multimillionaires on the list, plus Lord knows how many buying tickets — so we’ll conservatively push that number over the $15 billion barrier. At first, we wondered how on earth any of the Democrats could get that much money into one room. And then we remembered that all Hillary needs to do is have Warren Buffet hold another fund-raiser, and she’d be in the company of quadruple that amount. Nobody else would even need to show up.
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But Will the Endless Race Tear the Party Apart?
Woooo! Hillary won! Things are going to be exciting now. She’s back in it to win it. Or is she? As the confetti settles from last night, pundits have begun repeating their long-practiced warnings: In order to really capture the nomination, Hillary still has to pull some political moves that will tear the Democratic party asunder. Whether it’s a continued onslaught of attack ads, a bid to seat Michigan and Florida delegates, or a last-minute coup of the election by superdelegates, many are still afraid of what Clinton’s actions might mean for the party base.
• Jonathan Alter does the math using Slate’s Delegate Calculator (predicting generous Clinton victories), and still thinks she can’t win without superdelegates, even if she gets a rerun in Michigan and Florida. [Newsweek]
• Charles Hurt, who called Hill the “strife of the party,” warns that if superdelegates actually do give her the nomination despite overwhelming demand for Obama, “many of his supporters — including the party’s crucial bloc of black voters — will desert the party.” [NYP]
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General-Election Complications Already Emerging for McCain
Just because McCain is the Republican nominee (shh, don’t tell Mike Huckabee!) doesn’t mean he can kick up his feet and wait until the Democratic primary blows over. Every day brings new complications for McCain, whether within his own base or with the Democratic candidates. So many are already looking ahead to the general election, where McCain faces questions about his history with lobbyists, how to attack his opponents, and how to appeal to both moderates and conservatives. If his small trip-ups yesterday — not to mention what the pundits have been saying — are any indication, this campaign season could be a long one for McCain.
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Hillary Clinton Is Not Alone on Her Difficult Playing Field
In an interview on Nightline that aired last night, Hillary Clinton discussed the unique challenges she faced as woman running for president. “No woman has ever won a presidential primary before I won New Hampshire. This is hard. And I don’t expect any sympathy,” she told ABC’s Cynthia McFadden. Still, she wouldn’t mind it if everyone let go of their personal biases against a female leader. “Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field, but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there,” she said. There’s no doubt Clinton has been forced to perform a sort of ridiculous high-wire act this campaign, trying to find the perfect balance between attracting women voters without scaring away men, seeming human without seeming too much of a female human. Too much either way, and she falls into the safety net below (the Senate). But it’s also true that as a black guy with a problematic middle name, Barack H. Obama is competing on an uneven field as well (just ask Gaydolph Titler).
gossipmonger
Mick Jagger Is Friends With Leonardo DiCaprio and Q-Tip Bruce Willis yelled, “I’ve abandoned my son!” four times while dining at Freemans with an exotic dancer the other night, then did shots with the bartender. Mick Jagger, Q-Tip, and Leonardo DiCaprio were all hanging out at Upstairs on Monday night. Kathleen Turner’s Crimes of the Heart castmates can’t tell if she’s drunk or just tired. The Observer’s Spencer Morgan “bitch slapped” Men’s Vogue writer Hudson Morgan at the Beatrice Inn, but they made up soon after. Matthew McConaughey’s chest is at the top of In Touch Weekly’s list of Top Ten hot chests. Jason Bateman and Ricky Schroder are not working on a screenplay of Silver Spoons, although that would be awesome.
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Republicans, Democrats, and Now Ralph Nader: The Race Stays Interesting
Over the weekend Hillary Clinton dispelled any notions that she was ready to concede defeat and slink away into the night by lambasting Barack Obama for his allegedly dishonest critiques of her positions on health care and NAFTA. Mike Huckabee isn’t done either — he skewered his own reluctance to leave the race on Saturday Night Live. Plus, Ralph Nader somehow thinks it’s a good idea to run again. And while the primary landscape is still shifting, many people are already strategizing about the general election.
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Cindy McCain, Meet Everyone. Everyone, Meet Cindy McCain.
John McCain’s presidential campaign is rather desperately lacking for youth and glamour. It badly needs to soften the affect of the Senator’s grim hawkishness without soft-pedaling his national-security credentials. And in the last 48 hours, it has had to find a defense against the New York Times’ semi-allegations that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist who had business before his Senate Commerce Committee.
Almost by accident, one answer has emerged to all these conundrums: Cindy McCain.
company town
Lawyers Advocate an Oscar for ‘Michael Clayton’ — That George Clooney Makes Them Look So Good!LEGAL
• Lawyers everywhere are crossing their fingers for a Michael Clayton Oscar win. “In 80 years, only 10 legal movies or actors playing members of the legal community have taken home gold,” a columnist sighs. Awwwwww. Wait a second. We didn’t do the math, but isn’t that more than like, every other profession? How many people playing bloggers have won Oscars, for instance? Slickster lawyers. Always trying to trick us with their fancy talk. [Law.com]
• Could John Edwards be our next attorney general? [The American]
• The Sean Bell “50-shot” case is set to go to trial on Monday. [NYT]
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McCain Fallout: Pundits Are Abuzz!
The Times’ story on John McCain’s alleged affair with a lobbyist during his last presidential run crashed into the political discussion today like a flaming satellite tank filled with toxic innuendo and accusations. People are wondering a few things: What will be the effect on the Republican race and general election? (See our incisive post on what this says about Mike Huckabee having stuck in the race.) Is the Times really sure about their story, considering that the main sources are two unnamed former staffers? And, finally, is there anything they left out — maybe something specific, preferably salacious? As it stands now, the story amounts to a cruel tease — cruel to us, who want the whole truth and nothing but (and have gathered much of it in the 2008 Electopedia, newly updated with entries on the presumptive Republican nominee!), and cruel to McCain, who is no doubt praying for some fireworks in the Democratic debate tonight to push this down in the news cycle.
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The ‘Times’ McCain Debacle: Just What Huckabee Has Been Waiting For?Hooo boy! The Times really opened up a box of bees when they published their insinuating John McCain story late last night. If you haven’t seen it, it concerns McCain’s high-horse attitude toward ethics, which may have been compromised in part by a close, perhaps romantic relationship with attractive lobbyist Vicki Iseman during McCain’s first run for president eight years ago. The paper (using a half-dozen reporters and thousands of words) described confrontations that staffers had with both McCain and Iseman to stop what appeared to be an inappropriate intimacy. By late last evening, political blogs and news programs were exploding with reactions. McCain’s camp was outraged at what they called a “smear.” It quickly surfaced that there had been a long period of debate inside the Times as to when to publish the piece, and whether to do it at all. The McCain camp claimed that the paper ran with it after hearing that The New Republic was going to publish a story about the infighting at the paper over its inflammatory contents. Some critics even went so far as to speculate that the liberal Times wanted to wait until the Republicans had a presumptive nominee before blowing a hole in his candidacy. Woweee. Whether any of this affects McCain remains to be seen (we cannot wait for the smackdown that Cindy McCain is bound to lay down today). But the scandal addresses something that’s been itching us in the back of our heads for a long time: Why the heck is Mike Huckabee still in this race?
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McCain Anoints Obama As His Rival, Obama AcceptsOn the back of their respective strong wins in Wisconsin, John McCain has trained his sights on Barack Obama. He called the Illinois senator “naïve” for his position on bombing Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and labeled his position on whether he would accept public campaign financing as “Washington double-talk.” Obama lashed back through a spokesman, who said, “John McCain is in no place to question anyone on pledges when he abandoned the latest campaign-finance-reform efforts in order to run for the Republican nomination and went back on his commitment to take public financing for the primary.” Obama also had an editorial this morning in USA Today about working toward a compromise on financing with McCain. “I am committed to seeking such an agreement if that commitment is matched by Senator McCain,” Obama wrote. “When the time comes, we will talk and our commitment will be tested.” Wait, wait, wait. What started off as a bunch of bickering this morning suddenly morphed into what we’ve been expecting for a few weeks now: Obama is using the old Hillary tactic of running as the de facto nominee. He’s already fighting McCain directly and treating the primary competition as though it’s over. And McCain’s helping him do it. Now, this doesn’t mean anything, really; we saw how it didn’t quite work for Hillary. But it does mean it’s about time to add a new candidate to our trademarked New York Electopedia! Everyone welcome John McCain! How much money is he worth? How did he do in high school? What does he eat? The Electopedia has all of your answers.
The 2008 Electopedia [NYM]
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Jon Corzine Will Sign Gay-Marriage Bill, But Won’t Give Republicans a Talking PointGovernor Jon Corzine of New Jersey is frustrating gay activists because he is hesitant to get moving on a bill to change the state’s civil-unions policy to one of flat-out marriage equality. After a report was released yesterday that says civil unions in the state are not equal to marriages, the state legislature is under pressure to change the law. Civil unions have been allowed since 2006 in New Jersey after the State Supreme Court ruled that gay couples should receive the same legal rights and protections as married straight couples. Legislators quickly created a law that was designed to give equality to all parties. In order to comply with the decree of the Supreme Court, adjustments have to be made to the current policy, but Corzine says he wants to wait until after November to do so. “He will sign a bill, but doesn’t want to make it a presidential-election-year issue,” Corzine spokeswoman Lilo Stainton said. This is a shrewd move, both for Democrats and gays alike. A Republican nominee will be sure to use the specter of gay marriage to scare their base to the voting booths in November, as George Bush did so effectively in 2004. The last thing that gays hoping to wed (and Democrats hoping to win) need are endless high-profile speeches about the sanctity of marriage. It’s the one issue that could bring evangelicals like James Dobson together with front-runner John McCain, whom they currently mistrust.
N.J. governor concerned civil unions don’t bring equal rights [Newsday]
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Did McCain Win an Edge in More Than Just the Nomination Process?
While it seems increasingly likely that the Democratic nomination won’t be decided until August in a dark back room filled with smoke, secret deals, power plays, bribery, blackmail, maybe some murder, and definitely maniacal laughter, the Republican nominee was pretty much crowned yesterday. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Mitt Romney announced to the crowd that he was bowing out of the race to unify the party and avoid a Democratic surrender to terrorists, throwing one last bone to the base before he departed (until 2012 or 2016). McCain took the stage as the Republican nominee, and he offered an olive branch that was generally well received by the suspicious audience. He’ll move forward with some advantages over his still-feuding Democratic counterparts, but his road to victory is still bumpy and strewn with intractable, cranky conservatives.
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Mayor Bloomberg: ‘Hillary Should Pray I Get in the Race’Buried in Rush & Molloy’s “Side Dish” section today is a totally fun, kinda bitchy tidbit from Mike Bloomberg about Hillary Clinton. At a private event on Wednesday, Bloomberg said he thinks that after Super Tuesday, she’s “going to be the nominee.” But, he said, “that’s not to say she can beat John McCain.” Bloomberg and New York’s junior senator have been friendly as they’ve worked together on state issues, but his comments Wednesday seem a little skeptical. Hizzoner couldn’t vote in New York on Tuesday because he’s now a registered Independent. If he did make a bid for the presidency starting next month, he’d be courting a lot of the outside-the-box, fiscally conscious voters who have been attracted to McCain. “Hillary should pray I get in the race,” he cracked, “because that would help her.” Ah! Hubris! He’s already sounding presidential…
Side Dish [NYDN]
company town
Jeff Bewkes Starts Cleaning House at Time WarnerMEDIA
• At least 75 Time Warner layoffs are expected to be announced today. The layoffs are among CEO Jeff Bewkes’s first public tasks since taking the helm of the company from Dick Parsons last month. Earlier today, Time Warner announced a 41 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings. [MSNBC & AdAge]
• Maybe some of those Time Warner folks can hang their hats over at Condé Nast. The Observer evaluates Portfolio’s recent spending spree, during which it recruited top talent from The New Yorker, the Post, and the Times. [NYO]
• (Product)Red, the love child of Bono, iPod, and the Gap, has raised more than $22 million for fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. But considering the big advertising bucks spent during the Super Bowl and elsewhere, some are arguing that it’s not enough. [NYT]
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Heilemann: What McCain Must Do NowJohn McCain entered Super-Duper Tuesday with two goals — one obvious and concrete, the other more ephemeral but no less important in the long run. The first of McCain’s aims was to secure enough delegates in the 21 states in which Republicans voted to more or less lock up his party’s nomination. And the second was to win so decisively, so convincingly, that he could turn to the braying, hard-right, anti-McCain caucus and say, in effect: “Hello, people, lookee here, the party has rallied around me; it’s time for you either to get on the bus or shut the fuck up.”
gossipmonger
Atoosa to Spawn!Rush Limbaugh is catching flak for using the phrase “anal poisoning” in conjunction with John McCain and his potential running mate, Senator Lindsey Graham. Heather Mills will represent herself in divorce court next week. Nicky Hilton couldn’t get into a Fashion Week party at the Gramercy Park Hotel’s Rose Bar, perhaps because owner Ian Schrager doesn’t like her or her sister. Woody Allen wants Scarlett Johansson to be like Meryl Streep and not go the “‘Page Six’–party route.” Also, he calls her “sexy,” which is gross. Former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein is expecting a baby in July.
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Super Tuesday Tells Us This Thing Ain’t OverGood morning! How late did you stay up watching the Super Tuesday results come in? Did you make it to Minnesota? All the way to California? Well, now more than 90 percent of precincts are reported in all the states, and the results are more solid. John McCain has strengthened his lead on the Republican side, winning in nine states and pulling in an estimated 613 delegates. Romney, who won six states, pulled in only 269, and Huckabee, who was stronger last night than many expected, still earned only 190 delegates. On the Democratic side, things were much less clear. Late in the evening, Hillary pulled out a win by 10 percent in the hotly contested California race, putting her state total at eight and her estimated delegate total at 845. Obama won thirteen states and 765 delegates. That’s still far short of the 2,025 needed for a win, so we’ve got a long way to go. Both had strong wins in their home states of New York and Illinois, and the closest races were in New Mexico (still uncalled) and Missouri. Obama’s strong showing is going to make the next few weeks very interesting as Hillary tries to hang on to her base. We can’t wait! Tears! Red-faced Bill! Badass Michelle! Hope! Change! Day One! Bring it on.
Election Index [NYT]
company town
Finance Types Split Over Hillary and RomneyFINANCE
• Wall Street hopes Hillary has a super Super Tuesday, but private equity is standing by one of its own. Fourth-quarter campaign-financing reports show Senator Clinton taking in the lion’s share of donations from the Street’s top ten financial firms. Meanwhile, Bain Capital co-founder Mitt Romney is still tops among the PE crowd. [NYT/Dealbook]
• So, what’s it gonna be, boy? Stuck between Microsoft’s rock and Google’s hard place, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has limited options for saving his company at his disposal. [NYP]
• If you believe the latest hype, Citadel is paving the way for an IPO after all. Ken Griffin’s asset-management firm has split its proprietary hedge-fund business from its client-based options-making business. “Legally, it makes it cleaner,” said Josh Galper in an interview. [Bloomberg]
gossipmonger
Bloomie and McCain: A Ticket Made in Independent Heaven?John McCain may or may not ask Mike Bloomberg to be his running mate. Harvey Weinstein belted out “New York, New York” at his daughter’s 10th-birthday party at Spotlight Live. Recently married Vogue editor and socialite Lauren Davis wants to find a “gestational carrier” for her baby. First daughter Barbara Bush watched the Giants win at the Village Pourhouse with 40 friends. Josh Hartnett went to Freemans and the Beatrice Inn on Thursday, while Helena Christensen just went to Freemans. Andy Samberg went to BAM to watch harpist girlfriend Joanna Newsome perform.
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Happy Super Tuesday: The Candidates’ Last WordsOf course, tomorrow morning we’re probably not going to have learned anything definitive about this year’s presidential primary. But that doesn’t mean that each major candidate isn’t treating Super Tuesday as a do-or-die moment. Late last night and early this morning, each took the opportunity to make a final statement that would be circulated through the press throughout today as people gear up to head to the polls. Here’s what they’ve been saying:
• “In my White House, we will know who wears the pantsuits,” Hillary Clinton cracked on Letterman’s show last night. Sure, it was a joke response to a question from the host about whether husband Bill Clinton would be “going through stuff” while she was busy governing the nation, but it’s an important point. Since Bill got a little out-of-control campaigning on her behalf, and since she cried again yesterday, it was important for her to reiterate that she is tough and in charge. [Reuters]
• John McCain, meanwhile, stayed on message, saying that both Democratic candidates are clueless on Iraq. He also indicated that he’d set up “arrangements” to leave U.S. troops there permanently. “We’ve been in Kuwait right next door [to Iraq] for many years,” he pointed out. [NYDN]
in other news
Ann Coulter Is the Britney Spears of PoliticsEven though we do keep Fox News on all day (no, really), we missed the moment yesterday when Ann Coulter endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Jezebel.com directed our attention to it. “If you’re looking at substance rather than whether there’s an ‘R’ or ‘D’ after his name, manifestly if he’s our candidate, then Hillary’s going to be our girl,” the Coultergeist explained on Hannity & Colmes. “She’s more conservative than he is, she is going to be stronger than he is on terrorism.” Click above to view the clip. The conservative comedienne went on to say that she would campaign for Hillary if McCain was the Republican nominee. Coulter based her arguments on the fact that McCain is bad for the GOP, and than Hillary “lies less” and “is smarter” than he is. “She isn’t going to be a weak woman” and pull the troops out of Iraq, either, Coulter argued. “I’m a Hillary Girl now!”
We’re just going to say it: Ann Coulter is to political commentary what Britney Spears is to celebrity culture. Remember when Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant and was the focus of all attention for a couple of days? Britney got upset that she was out of the news for a few days, filled herself up with booze and pills, stole her children for a night, and had to be rushed to the hospital.
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The Rivalry in the Library: Romney and McCain Fight the Dirty FightKarl Rove writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today that “The Republican race is a serious debate about serious ideas.” That obviously went to press before last night’s Republican debate. And while the event happened in the Reagan Library, in the shadow of the actual Air Force One plane that Reagan once flew on, the shared claims to the Gipper’s legacy that have marked the primary campaign thus far gave way to some bruising back-and-forth, particularly, of course, between front-runners John McCain and Mitt Romney. (Mike Huckabee took his place as the new Ron Paul; Ron Paul, well, he was the same old overexcited, barely coherent Ron Paul.) McCain continued to contend that Romney had supported timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. Romney accused McCain of “dirty tricks” and “Washington-style old politics.” McCain hammered Romney for his attack ads and offered him some friendly financial advice: “A lot of it’s your own money, you’re free to do with what you want to. You can spend it all.” It was great theater (far, far more entertaining than the last debate), but the question remains: Who won?
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Conservative Pundits Seriously Bugging Out Over McCainJohn McCain, left for dead only a few months ago, has of course become the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Many Democrats are uneasy because he’s popular with independents and should pose a serious challenge in the general election. Republicans are uneasy because he’s popular with independents — that is, he hasn’t always been a team player. Lately, he’s been keeping the conservative bloggers and talk-radio folks up at night; when they finally get to sleep, they have nightmares of McCain making an illegal immigrant his secretary of defense and nominating Arianna Huffington to the Supreme Court.
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The Beast Is Slain: Heilemann on Giuliani’s Precipitous CollapseThis past Sunday afternoon, Rudy Giuliani, his presidential bid squarely on the line, his political future hanging by a thread, rolled up in his campaign bus outside Paisano’s Gourmet Pizza in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Hizzoner had been quoted in that morning’s USA Today saying, “The rumors of my demise are premature” — a statement that called its veracity into question by its very utterance. Now, Giuliani stood before a crowd that might have just barely broken into triple digits (if you were rounding up) and delivered what had become of his stump speech. He talked about fighting Islamic terrorism, cutting taxes, and keeping Hillary Clinton from taking control of health care. Across a stream behind the restaurant, a bunch of Ron Paul supporters began chanting, “Rudy is a cross-dresser!” Giuliani was unfazed. “We have to have goals, bold goals, big goals,” he proclaimed. He mentioned that a woman up front had named her cat after him. “It’s better-looking than me,” Rudy said. “That’s one good-looking cat.” Then Giuliani brought his talk to a merciful conclusion — eight minutes and nine seconds after it commenced.
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We Can Stop Caring About the State of Florida in Five, Four …
Floridians awake today knowing that they (sort of) hold the fate of the world in their hands. With the state’s electoral track record, that’s kind of scary. It’s neck and neck between McCain and Romney up front; much further behind, Giuliani and Huckabee are also … necking. The former pair are desperately grappling; the latter, probably praying. (Okay, not Giuliani.) Which way is the wind blowing this morning, and whom does it favor?
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The Republican Debate Made Mildly Interesting!Last night’s Republican debate at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was about as feisty as knitting lessons at the community center. It was as if the candidates, who mostly avoided attacks, were tired from the heat. Many observers handed Romney the victory for his smooth answers on the economy; McCain also did well. But Giuliani and Huckabee, while they didn’t do poorly, didn’t do much to break out of their second-tier positions in Florida. For those who missed it, we sifted the platitudes for the stuff that really matters.